Glance around a new restaurant today and you’ll see most of the room following one rule: phone eats first. 

 Inviting influencers to come, eat and spread the word via social media is now a key way for restauranteurs to launch their businesses – but back in 2016, when the founders of digital agency Wander, Chloë Clover and Lou Tonner, were travelling in Asia and Australia, that wasn’t yet the case. 

 “Lou – who’s now my wife – and I had decided to go travelling to figure out our lives,” Clover explains. “It was a time when social media was only just starting to become important to businesses – and most brands were still creating boring, traditional corporate content that wasn’t connecting with younger audiences. 

 “We realised that hospitality businesses were struggling to create engaging social media content, so we started making personality-driven content on a swap basis.” The pair used their “broken GoPro” camera to create photos and videos for an elephant sanctuary in Thailand, and a homestay in Vietnam, receiving accommodation and trips in return. “When the work really took off, we realised we needed to get home and do this properly.”

 And so they have. Wander, the duo’s business, now has more than 20 staff. Turnover from its two arms – a production business creating videos and animation for clients including KPMG and Greggs, and BBC documentaries, and a digital agency that creates ‘personalities’ for brands – is now in excess of £1 million.

 An early hit was a documentary Wander made about Riot Games bringing its League of Legends esports tournament to the UK; “it was a real pinch-me moment,” Clover adds. A recent Wander documentary, The Lakes: Our Life on the Edge about free solo climbers in the Lake District, is currently on iPlayer. 

 Yet Clover says success didn’t come easily. “I struggled at school, and one day when I was 15, it all broke down and I walked out and didn’t go back. 15-year-old me would be pretty surprised at where I am now.” She studied painting and worked as a drummer in bands before the travelling spell that led to Wander’s creation. 

“In the early days, people would say, ‘who are these two girls, skating to meetings and turning up in hoodies? But they knew we could access the audience that they were struggling to connect with. Being young, queer females in a male-dominated industry meant we had to work hard to prove ourselves. In the early days, we had a business mentor who sat us down one day and said, ‘I think you really need to start to take this more seriously, wear a business dress every day, and talk more professionally.’ We just said, ‘this guy is not for us. And we’ve done OK being us.”

 Wander’s ambitious growth plans span global expansion – the duo are part of a Department of Business trade mission to Texas next week, with another to Amsterdam later this year. “We go where the work is, and want to work with the biggest brands in the world.”

Read more about Wander via their website and read more of our scaleup stories here.

Founders of digital agency Wander, Chloë Clover and Lou Tonner,